Yogurt has increasingly become a more popular food, and the yogurt flavor has, correspondingly, become a more widely accepted flavor. Yogurt is currently commercially produced in three forms, i.e., the natural ferment, the frozen ferment and the spray dried ferment. Natural yogurt is subject to spoilage and the shelf-life thereof, even under refrigeration, is limited. While frozen yogurt has an extended shelf-life, the difficulty of handling this form limits its usefulness to the "ice-cream" type yogurt desserts. Thus, only the spray dried yogurt is available for extending the now more widely accepted yogurt flavor to other food compositions.
Spray dried yogurt, however, has an undesirable gritty or grainy texture, somewhat similar to powdered milk. It has been found that this texture renders the spray dried yogurt unacceptable for flavoring creamy confectioneries, where the gritty texture is unacceptable. It has also been found that the delicate flavor of spray dried yogurt can be substantially deteriorated when processed according to conventional methods of making confectioneries "creamy". Thus, for example, candies, puddings, custards, etc., are traditionally cooked at relatively high temperatures to convert the gritty or grainy texture of the uncooked mixture to the customary "creamy" texture. However, when spray dried yogurt is included in such confectioneries, the normal cooking temperatures, e.g., 260.degree. F. and above, cause a substantial deterioration of the delicate flavor of the spray dried yogurt. In particular, at temperatures of about 160.degree. F. and above, the spray dried yogurt undergoes a flavor degradation, somewhat similar to caramelization. If the higher cooking temperatures are continued, not only will the yogurt flavor be destroyed, but a most undesirable texture will be introduced.
Finally, it has also been found that in uncooked confectioneries, e.g., compound candy coatings, where the moisture content must be very low, i.e., 1% to 2% or less, there is not sufficient moisture to hydrate the relatively hard particles of spray dried yogurt and the resulting texture is unacceptably gritty or grainy.
It would, therefore, be of substantial benefit in the art if yogurt flavored confectioneries could be provided with the shelf-stable spray dried yogurt, but without the undesired deterioration of the yogurt flavor or the undesired texture.